


something that sends paranoia in

by totalgoesonao3



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, forzen is not having a good time, gamer marine fail compilation, its so hard to tell whos talking goddamnit, use your best judgement i suppose, xen fun and xen good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24552202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totalgoesonao3/pseuds/totalgoesonao3
Summary: Forzen opens his eyes to a strange alien world, unsure of what lies within.He'd never expect to find out the hard way...
Kudos: 10





	something that sends paranoia in

It’s pitch-black for just a moment, the chill of the floor beneath slowly fading away.  
But then, it’s no longer hard and stiff, but almost fleshy, and yet like stone.  
Forzen opens his eyes, one hand with a firm grip on the floor, ready to hoist him up if anything comes his way.  
His eyes pan back and forth, taking in his surroundings.  
Intricate walls, crawling with patterns akin to blood vessels, telling a story of so long ago, it would seem.  
That fleshy floor, with bony pillars peaking to the ceiling.  
His hand feels the floor, and notices a shallow puddle of some strange liquid next to him.  
His face contorts a bit, trying to find a memory of this place from an earlier time, but it doesn’t come to him.  
A completely alien world.  
“huh”  
“okay”  
Certain that the coast is clear, he hoists himself up onto his feet, eyes looking back at the shadows, where light cannot reach.  
Only silence seems to live here.  
Forzen sniffs at the air, and the powerful scent of glacier freeze nullifies the scent of gunpowder from all over him.  
And now, his attention is drawn to the pillars, segmented into many intricate parts like a human spine, sharp ridges following it all the way up to the ceiling, which drips with more liquid.  
As he walks to the pillar, his boots sink into the floor slightly, only to hit a hard bottom, as if the floor had a layer of skin, with bone underneath.  
His boots occasionally splash the little puddles of liquid that are scattered throughout.  
Lightly, he traces his fingers on the pillar, and taps it, making a low, hollow sound that echoes.  
His fingers drift to the ridges, which stick out a little and curve like claws.  
In a swift movement, he presses his hand against the ridges and swipes it downwards, causing the ends to cut right into his hand like butter.  
“uh nice”  
Incredibly sharp.  
Could make as a very effective knife.  
Without even bothering to inspect his bleeding wound, he turns again to the shadows.  
Low rustling makes a dull echo that bounces back to him.  
A rush of light explodes from the darkness and rushes right at Forzen’s face, which he dodges, rolls onto the ground, and hoists himself back up, immediately reaching for his gun-  
-but it isn’t there.  
There’s nothing.  
Two small creatures fly out from the darkness, with large heads, three arms, and a shriek that wails like a siren.  
“sacrament”  
“okay fuck off please”  
One of them puts its hands together, and another ball of light shimmers from within.  
This time, Forzen doesn’t attempt to dodge it.  
It blasts him right in the chest, going through his vest and uniform and spraying innards everywhere.  
“oh my goooosh”  
Seeing him vulnerable, the two creatures fly at him and claw at his face, wrenching themselves onto him.  
With an expression that can only be described as nonchalant, he takes the two creatures by their necks and snaps their heads off with a single tug.  
“shouldve listened damn”  
He drops one of them onto the floor, but inspects the other, noticing that, while most of its body is fragile, its head is very bony and hard, almost like a shell.  
He taps the head, and it makes the same, low sound that the spine pillars made.  
“yeah okay back off next time”  
“like uhhh hey”  
“you like beyblade?”  
A glimmer of joy sparks on his face for just a moment, but the lack of bodily movement from the creature reminds him that it is dead.  
And dead things can’t talk.  
He drops the corpse onto the floor, and shrugs it off.  
He’s never seen anything worse than that, after all.  
He continues onward through the area, seeing as it would be annoying to encounter more of those things.  
Ahead, he notices the openings of two vents, glowing a deep red like blood.  
Well, that’s one way to get out of here.  
He ducks down and gets on his stomach, just barely fitting into the vent.  
The glacier freeze scent is much stronger down here.  
He crawls to where the ceiling is high enough, and gets up so his head is pressed against the ceiling.  
He moves one of his legs, and notices that its sunken into a puddle of that strange liquid from before.  
“what is this stuff anyway”  
Carefully, he dips his hands in, and cups the liquid between them.  
Some of the gunpowder from his hands gets into the liquid, but that shouldn’t ruin the taste.  
He dips his head in, and gently sips it.  
It takes a few seconds for the taste to get to him, but it’s something blue…  
...Like blue raspberry?  
Forzen finds it too hard to pinpoint, but it tastes pretty good.  
“kinda better than the powerade tbh”  
Then, as if he was slammed into a wall, bright light fills his eyes, and he growls as a burning pain seeps itself into his head.  
“AIE!”  
He slams his head down onto the fleshy vent floor, breathing heavily as pain sears through his body.  
The pain leaves as quickly as it came, and Forzen opens his eyes dizzily, struggling to figure out where he is.  
“ _esti de câlice de tabarnak_ ”  
“hmm”  
The floors look black, and the tinted red vents have lost all texture to them.  
He leans his back against a wall, waiting for his vision to come back to him.  
“...damn”  
The moment he can feel a wall and know for sure that it’s there, he shakes himself off, little bits of gunpowder getting flinged off, and gets back up.  
Something he hadn’t noticed before, a green light, calls to him.  
Against the back wall, a shifting black and green portal breathes, particles from one side coming out, and then coming back in.  
Forzen squints at it for a moment, and slowly crawls toward it, until his face gets pushed back lightly from dust.  
Little sounds can be heard from the other side, like a wind calmly blowing, like the little ambient sounds of empty space, if there were any.  
He reaches a hand into the green flames, slowly and steadily, and-

A flash of light smothers him like ants, and then lets go, plopping him down onto a floating mass of rock.  
The rock shifts a bit under his weight, floating down a few inches and tilting to the right.  
He scrambles to maintain his balance, and marvels at the view.  
More masses of rock, stranded in the abyss, are formed like stepping stones, like a path.  
And that path leads to a red light, generated by something that Forzen can only determine as a silhouette, for now.  
“might as well”  
And a light sense of adventure comes to him.  
“hahaha”  
He positions himself to leap, and goes for the nearest rock to him, gliding a bit from the low gravity.  
This time, he’s prepared, and lands onto the next rock with relative ease.  
He jumps a few more rocks, and notices that the light in the distance gets brighter and brighter.  
Now, he can identify a structure, with spines curling up to the sky and inward, with the light in the middle.  
The mass of rock that it’s on is much bigger than the others.  
In a frenzy of adventurous curiosity, Forzen takes the risk of skipping a few rocks, jumping right over them to just barely scramble onto another.  
His smile is even wider, now, showing all his teeth and all his bravery.  
“damn this is great”  
“hahahahahahaha”  
And then, he realizes that there’s no more rocks to stand on.  
Just one.  
The light consumes his eyes, a red pulsing light that makes his head spin.  
The spines tower like claws grasping at the light, with a platform and a big mass of stone on top of the rock.  
He scrambles onto the platform, onto the king’s throne.  
“yeah what”  
Well, a portal is one step out of here.  
Forzen steps up the throne, his wounds now almost closed entirely, and with an almost smug expression on his face.  
He’s never seen anything worse than this.  
With a calm exhale, he runs and throws himself into the ball of light.

And he can’t breathe.  
He waves his hands around to grasp for something, only to realize he’s face-first in the glacier freeze liquid from earlier.  
It’s warm, and bubbles slightly.  
Hoisting himself up to his feet, he coughs and hacks any of the liquid that got into his throat, spreading some gunpowder around in the process.  
Suddenly, his skin feels bare, like the liquid washed all the gunpowder off of him.  
While some stains his clothes, it’s still a very uncomfortable feeling.  
However, the momentary feeling of disgust is soon stolen away as his eyes fixate on something in the distance.  
A mass of blackness.  
It pokes out of the large pool slightly, though it’s hard to decipher any details.  
“huh another one?”  
“so annoying”  
“tell me how to get out of here and”  
“uhhh”  
“hey you like beyblade?”  
“i have uhh ultimate dragoon beyblade with three b-”  
And then, it moves.  
The area rumbles slightly as the mass dips down a bit, and more of it moves out of the water, a long, looming spine with arms that arch and touch the floor.  
And then, the mass pulls itself up, revealing that the small blackness from before was a head, to a neck, to a gigantic humanoid mass that looms like a skyscraper, surprisingly not as tall as the room itself, in which the ceiling is impossible to see.  
The pressure over the room quiets Forzen’s voice down a whisper.  
“ _...decriss_ ”  
The thing doesn’t stand up, but is rather on its knees with its hands in the water.  
It is now that Forzen can make out some details.  
A uniform, colored blue, with a black vest that covers the chest.  
Piercing eyes that glow in the dim light, belonging to an expressionless, almost sapped face.  
And, to Forzen’s horror, the mass from earlier was not a head, but a-  
“ _ **tête de casque.**_ ”  
Heart pounding in his chest, he desperately attempts to keep his whole body from shaking.  
He’s never seen something like this.  
It can’t be.  
His hands mindlessly fidget for any gun, any grenade, any knife, or any weapon to defend himself.  
But he has nothing.  
His chest constricts, and he struggles to breathe, gunpowder-stained sweat rolling down his face.  
The beast drips with the glacier freeze liquid, its eyes seemingly unfocused and disassociated.  
Maybe it hasn’t seen him yet, though it doesn’t seem to be actively looking for him.  
The beast takes one of its hands out of the liquid, inspecting how it drips down.  
It then rises up more, until it is completely standing up, revealing blue pants and boots.  
A thunderclap of movement hits, as the beast’s arms morph into the body, the legs widen, and the head expands-  
It’s faster than Forzen can process, and he immediately stops breathing as soon as he can get a glimpse of what the beast has turned into.  
Its head violently shakes and spins, smashing into the walls of the room, causing a thundering noise that echoes throughout the entire area.  
Chunks of rock smash open and fall into the pool of liquid, and Forzen lets out a muffled yelp as he dashes to the nearest thing he can hide behind, a jagged rock that sticks out of the liquid.  
The beast shakes all the liquid off of it, its head twitching and spinning like a screwdriver until it is well dried off.  
It stops, and the body seems to have trouble supporting its weight, causing the head to slam into the liquid as the two widened legs struggle to pull it up.  
The beast morphs again, and returns back to its humanoid state, going back on its knees, and then lowering itself back onto its chest, ruining the point of drying itself off.  
It still seems to have not noticed that Forzen is in the room with it.  
In an act of desperation, Forzen goes to the wall nearest to him and presses hard against it.  
It’s no use.  
He pushes and pushes, but the wall stays solid, refuses to let him sink in.  
There’s no exit.  
The only thing here that would know about any exit is-  
“hey”  
“what are you”  
“what are you doing back there, bro?”  
Forzen screams and continues to shove himself onto the wall, but soon a shadow encases him.  
Benry’s shadow.  
“trynna get away?”  
“i can see you everywhere you go”  
“best friend”  
“kinda uh”  
“mean to those little guys back there, werentcha?”  
Forzen struggles to form words.  
“ _is that you_ ”  
“ _is this yours_ ”  
“ _uhhhh y-youre their leader?_ _”_  
“uhhhhhhh”  
“yea- no idk them”  
“huh wha”  
“you”  
“you wanna know where i live?”  
“w-”  
“doesnt matter”  
“try the gatorade bro”  
“ _already did_ ”  
“ _tastes like shit_ ”  
“no, man”  
“you arent supposed to be here”  
“ _j'm'en calice_ ”  
“calmez-vous”  
“ _wait what_ ”  
He was certain that Benry absorbed none of the French he taught him, but…  
“why are you scared bro”  
“whats wrong”  
“ _the fuck are you_ ”  
“im”  
“im benry”  
“ _no youre a fucking_ ”  
“ _youre a fucking monster_ ”  
“why you freakin out?”  
“think im gonna hurtcha”  
“think id kill you”  
“bro”  
“ _tabarnak_ ”  
“we’ll see about that”  
His expression shifts into one Forzen has never seen before.  
A smile.  
A toothy grin of mockery.  
“HA HA HA HA HA”  
Something burning obscures Forzen’s view, sparking electricity and a violent, screaming light, and he’s shoved harder against the wall.  
Noise fills the air, the sound of gunshots and wailing, inhuman noises coming from the beast, plummeted by all the lead pumped into him.  
His neck extends to the opposite wall, the rest of his limbs attempting to grasp the floor.  
Blood stains the Gatorade pool, the colors of blue and red mixing to become a deep, black purple.  
Three figures lash at the beast from the ground, too far away and drowned in the chaos for Forzen to make out.  
Another figure, seemingly as flat as paper, is also joining the fray, shooting out blue lasers that sear into Benry’s skin.  
And, from the sky, the red-hot gleam of a minigun falls and bursts open right onto Benry, his spine arching at the final blow.  
“AUUUGH”  
Something else speaks, but the voice is drowned out by everything else.  
The hum of the Sweet Voice picks up, like a disharmonic cry of pain, and Benry lifts into the sky, a green light encasing and evaporating him.  
Another flash of light rings through the area, and Forzen looks away for just a moment, only for a cry to break through.  
“NOOOOOOOOOO”  
Chunks of the walls start falling off, and the ceiling collapses as a rain of stone smashes everything underneath.  
And the dust doesn’t clear in time to make out much, but as the light opens up and he can feel the cold floor again, Forzen sees something.  
Bones.

“NON”  
He immediately gets up, and grabs his gun.  
Wait.  
His gun.  
He lets out a shaky sigh of relief, still breathing a bit heavily from the nightmare he just had.  
An alien feeling, to be truly afraid.  
Not knowing how to deal with it, he slumps back onto the floor and curls up, trying to smell the familiar scent of gunpowder for comfort.  
That is, until something stands over him.  
“hey”  
“what are you doing”  
Forzen flinches at the voice, the voice of the beast.  
But he’s not dreaming anymore, and it’s just Benry.  
“w”  
“whats wrong man”  
“why are you scared”  
Forzen’s eyes pan up to see Benry’s stone-wall expression.  
“im just laying down”  
“fucking tired after the uh”  
“mission yesterday”  
“damn”  
And he notices how Benry’s eyes glow from the shadow his helmet casts down, and he visibly flinches.  
“what the fuck”  
“hey wanna play mag with the”  
“medic update”  
“yeah sure cool”  
“...”  
The image of the beast burns itself into his mind, and the shriek rings through his ears-  
“hey go away please?”  
“fucking tired man”  
“huh wha”  
“wanna play mag?”  
“ _later_ ”  
He curls up more, and hides his face with his arm.  
“k bye”  
Without another word, Benry simply walks away.  
And Forzen is alone.

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY GOT THIS STUPID THING COLOR-CODED NICE  
> if i write any future hlvrai stuff i will be sure to color-code it for yall :D


End file.
